We calculate thermal photon and neutral pion spectra in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions in the framework of three-fluid hydrodynamics. Both spectra are quite sensitive to the equation of state used. In particular, within our model, recent data for S + Au at 200 AGeV can only be understood if a scenario with a phase transition (possibly to a quark-gluon plasma) is assumed. Results for Au+Au at 11 AGeV and Pb + Pb at 160 AGeV are also presented.

A generic property of a first-order phase transition in equilibrium, and in the limit of large entropy per unit of conserved charge, is the smallness of the isentropic speed of sound in the mixed phase . A specific prediction is that this should lead to a non-isotropic momentum distribution of nucleons in the reaction plane (for energies < 40A GeV in our model calculation). On the other hand, we show that from present effective theories for low-energy QCD one does not expect the thermal transition rate between various states of the effective potential to be much larger than the expansion rate, questioning the applicability of the idealized Maxwell/Gibbs construction. Experimental data could soon provide essential information on the dynamics of the phase transition.

We investigate the excitation function of quark-gluon plasma formation and of directed in-plane flow of nucleons in the energy range of the BNLAGS and for the Ekin Lab = 40A GeV Pb+Pb collisions performed recently at the CERN-SPS. We employ the three-fluid model with dynamical unification of kinetically equilibrated fluid elements. Within our model with first-order phase transition at high density, droplets of QGP coexisting with hadronic matter are produced already at BNL-AGS energies, Ekin Lab C 10A GeV. A substantial decrease of the isentropic velocity of sound, however, requires higher energies, Ekin Lab C 40A GeV. We show the e ect on the flow of nucleons in the reaction plane. According to our model calculations, kinematic requirements and EoS effects work hand-in-hand at Ekin Lab = 40A GeV to allow the observation of the dropping velocity of sound via an increase of the directed flow around midrapidity as compared to top BNL-AGS energy.

We investigate the excitation function of directed flow, which can provide a clear signature of the creation of the QGP and demonstrate that the minimum of the directed flow does not correspond to the softest point of the EoS for isentropic expansion. A novel technique measuring the compactness is introduced to determine the QGP transition in relativistic-heavy ion collisions: The QGP transition will lead to higher compression and therefore to higher compactness of the source in coordinate space. This e ect can be observed by pion interferometry. We propose to measure the compactness of the source in the appropriate principal axis frame of the compactness tensor in coordinate space.

Compactness is introduced as a new method to search for the onset of the quark matter transition in relativistic heavy ion collisions. That transition supposedly leads to stronger compression and higher compactness of the source in coordinate space. That effect could be observed via pion interferometry. We propose to measure the compactness of the source in the appropriate principal axis frame of the compactness tensor in coordinate space.

Noneequilibrium models (three-fluid hydrodynamics and UrQMD) use to discuss the uniqueness of often proposed experimental signatures for quark matter formation in relativistic heavy ion collisions. It is demonstrated that these two models - although they do treat the most interesting early phase of the collisions quite differently(thermalizing QGP vs. coherent color fields with virtual particles) - both yields a reasonable agreement with a large variety of the available heavy ion data.

We discuss a model for the space-time evolution of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions which employs relativistic hydrodynamics within one region of the forward light-cone, and microscopic transport theory (i.e. UrQMD) in the complement. Our initial condition consists of a quark-gluon plasma which expands hydrodynamically and hadronizes. After hadronization the solution eventually changes from expansion in local equilibrium to free streaming, as determined selfconsistently by the interaction rates between the hadrons and the local expansion rate. We show that in such a scenario the inverse slopes of the mT -spectra of multiple strange baryons ( Xi,Omega) are practically una ected by the purely hadronic stage of the reaction, while the flow of p's and Lambda's increases. Moreover, we find that the rather soft transverse expansion at RHIC energies (due to a first-order phase transition) is not washed out by strong rescattering in the hadronic stage. The earlier kinetic freeze-out as compared to SPS-energies results in similar inverse slopes (of the mT -spectra of the hadrons in the final state) at RHIC and SPS energies.

We analyze the hadronic freeze-out in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC in a transport approach which combines hydrodynamics for the early, dense, deconfined stage of the reaction with a microscopic non-equilibrium model for the later hadronic stage at which the hydrodynamic equilibrium assumptions are not valid. With this ansatz we are able to self-consistently calculate the freeze-out of the system and determine space-time hypersurfaces for individual hadron species. The space-time domains of the freeze-out for several hadron species are found to be actually four-dimensional, and di er drastically for the individual hadrons species. Freeze-out radii distributions are similar in width for most hadron species, even though the is found to be emitted rather close to the phase boundary and shows the smallest freeze- out radii and times among all baryon species. The total lifetime of the system does not change by more than 10% when going from SPS to RHIC energies.

We calculate the yields of a variety of hadrons for RHIC and LHC energies assuming thermodynamical equilibration of the produced minijets, and using as input results from pQCD for the energy densities at midrapidity. In the calculation of the production of partons and of transverse energy one has to account for nuclear shadowing. By using two parametrizations for the gluon shadowing one derives energy densities di ering strongly in magnitude. In this publication we link those perturbatively calculated energy densities of partons via entropy conservation in an ideal fluid to the hadron multiplicities at chemical freeze-out.

We calculate the yields of pions, kaons, and Æ-mesons for RHIC and LHC energies assuming thermodynamical equilibration of the produced minijets, and using as input results from pQCD for the energy densities at midrapidity. In the calculation of the production of partons and of transverse energy one has to account for nuclear shadowing. By using two parametrizations for the gluon shadowing one derives energy densities differing strongly in magnitude. In this publication we link those perturbatively calculated energy densities of partons via entropy conservation in an ideal fluid to the hadron multiplicities at chemical freeze-out.